Have you ever noticed time is different in older recordings? There isn't a strict adherence to tempo. Songs speed up and slow down. They breathe.
That started to change in the late 70s, early 80s because DJs wanted records they could "beat match." If two records are locked in to strict tempos, you can turn up the volume on one while turning down the other. This "cross-fading" changed clubs into discos, because the dance crowd could transition between songs without stopping. It still works if they're not the same tempo – but they have to be strict.
Metronomes had long existed for practice purposes. But nobody used metronomes in the recording studio – called "click tracks" – until social pressures changed. Listeners quickly grew to expect strict timing.
The technology changed the music.
Computers fundamentally changed us around 2000. We were all looking for it, but none of us could see it.
Some things are exceptionally hard to put into words. If you look straight at something in the dark, it disappears, you have to look at it sideways. We only truly understand our lives in retrospect, but we have to live them now.
"TNT" by Tortoise came out twenty five years ago, March 10, 1998. At 4 times a week, I estimate I've listened to it over five thousand times since.
It has a tremendous amount of detail. I still discover new elements – fewer now than at first, but it keeps surprising me often enough to keep me from taking it for granted. The elements have an alchemical relationship – the way I feel when I listen affects what emerges.
TNT interacts with the environment around it. The wolf-tone bass dissonance in "A Simple Way" often produces weird physical rattles through different speakers. One day a few years ago, I heard the clothes dryer playing its little 'I'm done' song. I noticed it was in tune with the song playing, but shifted modally. Then I realized appliances didn't used to play songs. Maybe buzz, or ring a bell. But things can play little songs now because everything has a chip in it. Time has changed.
I clearly remember the first time I heard TNT. It starts with a single beat, one hit on an acoustic kick and ride. Crank it up loud – you can hear the room the drums are in too.
The drums patter in jazzy misdirection for almost a minute. At 0:54 though, the beat locks in. From this point forward the rest of the album is on strict time.
Whenever a restriction exists, it opens a possibility for creativity. Black and white photography puts the focus on composition. Hip hop comes from two turntables and a microphone.
Ideas are like "Minesweeper". Do you remember the game? It came on Windows machines in the 2000s. Minesweeper could give you a shock, when you clicked a single tile and the whole room opened up. When an idea hits me, it feels like an ice crystal forming, stretching out a tentacle that spreads…
TNT balances precisely between the old world – jazz, with its musty instruments and revolutionary museum pieces. And the new world – computers, fresh and clean, constantly, instantly new.
Computer jazz.